Summer
2003
Chairs of Distinction
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JAMES
WEISS
Chizuko Kawata Chair in Cardiology
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| Stephen Yeazell
|
AS
THE CHIZUKO KAWATA CHAIR in the David Geffen School of
Medicine at UCLA, James Weiss is studying cardiac arrhythmias —
irregular heartbeats — which account for 300,000 sudden cardiac
deaths each year and is the single-greatest cause of heart-related
deaths.
Weiss’ research spans molecular, animal and
clinical investigations and also uses computer modeling. “We
have a virtual heart that can simulate abnormalities to produce
these arrhythmias,” he says.
Weiss, who is chief of the Division of Cardiology
and director of the UCLA Cardiovascular Research Laboratory, has
held the Kawata Chair since 1991. The endowment has been a boon
to his studies, he says, because it supports preliminary research
that is necessary to gain larger research grants and to pursue new
research directions.
For
instance, Weiss wanted to understand if so-called “chaos theory”
could be applied to gain insights into ventricular fibrillation,
which is the type of arrhythmia that causes sudden death.
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